Christopher Schmidt-Nowara passed away suddenly in Paris on June 27, 2015, while visiting his daughter. Only 48 years old, he had already established himself as a significant scholar of the Spanish Atlantic.

Born in Boston, Chris was raised in New Mexico. There he was surrounded by the complex legacy of Spain's conquest and colonization of the Americas. His intellectual engagement with Spain and the Americas began as a child when he took a summer course in Spanish. It is perhaps not surprising that Spain and the Americas became the focus of his intellectual interests as an undergraduate at Kenyon College, which included a year in Spain as a student in NYU's program in Madrid. These experiences led him to pursue his doctoral studies in history at the University of Michigan under the direction of Rebecca Scott. In that rich interdisciplinary environment his...